“Far be it from me to say there’s such a thing as poetic justice,” Kuhlhani said now, “but if there were such a thing as poetic justice, then—”
He broke off, expression puzzled as he heard a sound. Sailing ships underway in a seaway were much noisier places than most landsmen would have believed, but sailors learned to recognize all of those noises. They knew what they were, why they were there, and what caused them. And when they heard one they couldn’t identify, it got their attention quickly.
In this case, the sound Lieutenant Kuhlhani couldn’t identify was the clatter of a pair of grappling hooks as they arced into the air from astern of the galleon and hooked their prongs over the taffrail on the poop deck above him.
As in most of the Navy of God’s galleons, Saint Frydhelm’s poop deck was fairly short, forming a roof above the after part of the quarterdeck in a feature adopted from merchant galleon design. In a merchant ship, it provided a raised platform from which to con the ship but, even more importantly, it protected the quarterdeck-mounted wheel from the effects of rain, wind, and—especially—waves in heavy weather. If a ship was pooped, overtaken from astern by a heavy sea, the wave could sweep the full length of her decks, causing serious damage and washing men overboard. It could also wash away the men on the wheel, with potentially catastrophic consequences for control of the ship, especially in the midst of stormy weather. There’d been no galleon warships in the days of pre-Merlin Athrawes artillery, but the war galley’s sterncastle had served much the same function as the merchant galleon’s poop deck and, in addition, protected the men on the wheel from enemy fire.
As galleons were adapted for war, replacing galleys and growing rapidly larger on the seas of a post-Merlin Safehold, average freeboard had increased, raising the level of the quarterdeck (and so decreasing the likelihood of being pooped) while retaining the massive sterncastles could only have made the ships far less weatherly and maneuverable. Charisian naval architects had simply deleted them completely, but the Church’s more conservative designers had substituted the merchant galleon’s lighter poop deck as a compromise. Charisian experience with captured Church galleons suggested that the poop decks offered little practical defensive advantage and had a measurable negative impact on maneuverability, but the Church and her subject navies had stuck with them.
Most merchant galleons used their longer poop decks as the roofs of cabins built at the quarterdeck level. In Saint Frydhelm it simply formed a space—open at the front, closed at the back—almost like a cave, over the wheel, the stern chasers, and the last two guns in each broadside. There was no sternwalk at that level, but there were no lids on the quarterdeck gunports, any more than there were on the spardeck broadside ports. Now the grappling hooks sank their points firmly into the wood of the taffrail at poop deck level, and two figures in the blackened breastplates and hauberks of the Imperial Charisian Guard sailed in through those open stern gunports feet-first, hit the deck, rolled, and came smoothly upright.
If anyone had been watching at that moment, they might have noticed that the guardsmen had actually made no use at all of the grappling hooks. Tractor beams were so much more convenient, after all. Those hooks, like the lines attached to them and the fishing boat towing at the ends of those lines, were there for an entirely different reason.
But no one had been watching. Indeed, Kuhlhani was just beginning to turn towards the rather louder sound of their arrival when Merlin Athrawes squeezed his trigger.
The shotgun in Merlin’s hands would have been called a 10-gauge on Old Earth, because a spherical lead bullet for it would have weighed one-tenth of a pound. Its bore was just over three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and each shell was loaded with sixteen of what had once been called “double-ought buckshot.”
Each pellet was a separate .32 caliber lead ball, traveling at just over fourteen hundred feet per second. All of them hit the lieutenant squarely in the chest, and he flew backward without even a scream.
Ahlzhernohn whirled. He hadn’t heard the grappling hooks, but the thunderous shotgun blast, trapped under the poop deck “roof,” hit his ears like a sledgehammer.
He’d made it less than halfway around when Nimue Chwaeriau squeezed her trigger.
There were shouts in plenty now. The men on the wheel turned, staring in disbelief at the smoke-shrouded apparitions behind them, and metal clicked as the PICAs worked the shotguns’ slides smoothly. Their weapons and ammunition had been manufactured not by the Delthak Works, but by an AI named Owl, and they boasted certain refinements Taigys Mahldyn’s designs had not yet attained. One of those refinements was a box magazine which contained eight rounds, and as long as the firer held the trigger back, the Owl-built weapon fired each time the slide was worked.
The amount of carnage a pair of 10-gauge shotguns could wreak, each firing once per second, was indescribable. Every man on the quarterdeck was dead or dying before Ahlzhernohn’s body hit the deck and stopped rolling, and Merlin and Nimue stepped across the corpses with faces of stone.
* * *
“Mommy!”
Stefyny Mahkzwail thrashed upright in her hammock as thunder exploded overhead and Lyzet screamed. The other girls jerked awake right with her, and she heard their panicky cries, as well.
“It’s all right, Lyzet!” she called, fighting the confinement of her hammock. “It’s all right! Mommy’s here!”
“What is it?! What is it?!”
“I don’t know, honey, but Mommy’s here!”
She half fell to the deck as she finally escaped the hammock. All three girls were already out of theirs, and they hit her like hunting wyverns striking a rabbit. She staggered at the impact, but she got her arms around them as she went to her knees, hugging them tightly.
“I’m here!” she told them again and again. “I’m here! Be brave!”
* * *
Gyairmoh Hainz was a landsman. He’d never claimed or wanted to be anything else, and while he had to admit free-swinging hammocks were far more comfortable than beds would have been aboard a ship, he hadn’t yet acquired the knack of climbing in or out of one of them gracefully. Now he tumbled out of his hammock with all the grace of a pig in swamp mud and landed flat on his backside, but he hardly noticed the impact. He was too busy springing back upright and snatching for his sword belt.
The sounds which had awakened him were the stuff of nightmares, and his blood ran cold as the cacophony of gunfire and the screams of the wounded and dying crashed over him. There’d been rumors that Earl Thirsk’s family was being moved to Zion on the Grand Inquisitor’s orders because Vicar Zhaspahr was less than confident of the earl’s total loyalty to Mother Church and the Jihad. They’d been very quiet, those rumors, whispered only in dark corners, and Father Aimohs had addressed Hainz’ entire detachment on that very subject before they ever boarded ship. The rumors, he’d said, were simply untrue. They were to convey the earl’s family to Zion because of specific threats against their safety made by the infamous terrorist Dialydd Mab and his murderers, apparently because of the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s successes against the heretics. That was the only reason Vicar Zhaspahr and Vicar Allayn had decided they must extend Mother Church’s protective hand over them.
To his shame, Hainz had been less than positive Father Aimohs was telling them the truth. He’d hated admitting that to himself, but he couldn’t help remembering the stories about how Earl Thirsk had resisted delivering captured heretics to the Inquisition to face the Punishment. And, whether Mother Church wanted to admit it or not, Hainz knew the Jihad was going badly—very badly—in Siddarmark. Under the circumstances, Mother Church had to be alert for any sign Dohlar might try to follow Desnair’s example. In which case, he’d thought, it was only too possible, even likely, that the rumors about Vicar Zhaspahr’s suspicion of the earl were entirely accurate.
Now, as he heard the impossible rapidity of that thunderstorm gunfire, he knew he’d been wrong to doubt.
He flung the sword belt across his
shoulder like a bandolier, snatched up the pair of loaded, double-barreled pistols he’d laid ready with his uniform, and dashed for the cabin door barefoot, wearing only the boxer shorts in which he customarily slept.
* * *
Merlin stepped down the short quarterdeck ladder to the main deck, shotgun held hip high and belching flame. The muzzle flashes were enormous, huge bubbles of blinding light in the darkness and the rain, but they had no effect on his vision. He swept the deck with a broom of fire, ejected an empty magazine, slapped in a loaded one, and opened fire once more as the first members of Saint Frydhelm’s off-watch crew erupted from the main hatch.
Behind him, Nimue followed down the ladder but turned aft, towards what should have been the captain’s quarters. The single rifle-armed Temple Guardsman posted in the vestibule outside the passengers’ cabins—solely to protect their privacy, of course—was waiting when she kicked open the doorway under the break of the quarterdeck. He fired as the door flew open and a sledgehammer struck her chest. But the flattened bullet whined viciously as it ricocheted from the battle-steel breastplate, and her PICA’s strength shrugged off the impact.
The guardsman goggled in disbelief as his short, obviously female target ignored a direct hit and continued straight towards him. He had time to get his rifle up, to begin a bayonet thrust, but Nimue’s left hand darted out. Her right retained its grip on the shotgun; the left twisted the guardsman’s rifle, and he started to cry out in shock as she snatched it effortlessly from his grip. He never completed the exclamation; the butt plate of his own rifle, driven horizontally with pile-driver force in a one-handed blow, shattered his forehead and killed him in mid-syllable.
* * *
Syndail Rahdgyrz erupted from his cabin, one deck below Nimue, sword in hand, and almost collided with Gyairmoh Hainz. For an instant, Rahdgyrz glared at the Temple Guardsman. He was Saint Frydhelm’s captain; it was his job to get on deck first! But Hainz wasn’t slowing down, and he had a pistol in each hand. Rahdgyrz had only his sword, and the cascade of gunfire told him a sword alone wasn’t going to be enough.
He paused for a single heartbeat, letting Hainz bull past him, then followed at a run.
* * *
“Pistols!” Sergeant Sedwei Garzha bawled as the men of Captain Hainz’s detachment rolled—and fell—out of their berth deck hammocks, rubbing at sleep-crusted eyes while their brains tried to catch up. All around them, members of the galleon’s crew were jerking awake, rolling out, hitting the deck, and his voice rose over the tumult like a trumpet.
“Take your fucking pistols!” he shouted. “Let’s move! Move, Shan-wei take you!”
* * *
Nimue opened the door to the captain’s day cabin rather more sedately than the last one she’d encountered. She stepped through it, then stopped suddenly on the threshold. Sir Ahrnahld Mahkzwail and Greyghor Whytmyn might have been sound asleep when the attack began, but they were waiting inside the cabin. Somehow, they’d gotten daggers past the watchful eyes of their “escort,” and steel gleamed in their hands as they stood shoulder to shoulder between her and their families. She saw the combined desperation and determination in their postures and expressions, and she raised her left hand quickly, elevating the shotgun muzzle to point at the deckhead instead of them.
“Wait!” she said sharply while Merlin’s fire rolled and thundered behind her. “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to rescue you!”
Mahkzwail had already begun a hopeless lunge. Now he managed to abort it somehow and skidded to a halt, staring at her. She turned slightly, letting the lamplight fall fully on the blazon of the Charisian Imperial Guard on her breastplate, marred now with a long smear of lead from the sentry’s bullet, and his eyes narrowed.
“I don’t have time to explain,” she said quickly, wondering if that sounded as idiotic to them as it did to her. Of course she didn’t have time to explain! There was a damned firefight going on on deck! “Clyntahn wants you in Zion to control Earl Thirsk. Eventually, he’s going to kill the Earl, and both of you know it as well as I do. What do you think Clyntahn’s going to do with his children and his grandchildren when that happens?”
The two men darted glances at each other, and she saw the grim recognition in their eyes. They knew exactly what would happen to their wives and children on that day.
“We don’t want that to happen,” she went on hurriedly. “I don’t know exactly what will happen; that’s going to depend on things no one can predict right now. But Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan have instructed me to give you their personal word that you and your families will be safe in Charisian custody, no matter what else happens.”
Mahkzwail and Whytmyn looked at each other again, and then, in unison, they lowered their daggers. Nimue heaved a huge sigh of relief, PICA or no PICA, and nodded to them.
“Get everyone together in the stern cabin,” she said. “Keep them there.” She smiled coldly. “No one’s getting past me to hurt them.”
* * *
Gyairmoh Hainz charged up the steep ladder to the main hatch and hurled himself through it. He saw a tall, black shape turning towards him, and the double-barreled pistol in his right hand belched fire and recoiled sharply. He rode the recoil, brought it down, reacquired his target, and—
A charge of buckshot hit him in the head, effectively decapitating him, and his corpse fell back down the ladder.
* * *
Merlin saw Hainz disappear in an explosion of blood, but there was someone else right behind the captain. Whether it was courage, or faith, or simply an instinctive reaction by men who hadn’t yet realized what they faced, Saint Frydhelm’s crew and Gyairmoh Hainz’ guardsmen swarmed up the ladders to defend their ship.
Another shotgun thundered behind him and he knew Nimue had reemerged from beneath the quarterdeck. That was her position, her task: to be the fortress between Thirsk’s family and any threat, and nothing was going to move her. He’d seen her expression when he laid out the plan for this attack, known she realized why he’d assigned her to guard the civilians. She’d wanted to protest, but she hadn’t, and he’d been grateful.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t watch his back, and her shotgun bellowed again and again.
He advanced on the main hatch, working the slide, firing another round each time his right foot came down, ripping the mass of men trying to reach him with fire and gunsmoke and lead. He drove them back into the hatch, then down the ladder. He hit the release button inside the trigger guard and another empty magazine dropped free. He reloaded on the fly, worked the slide, squeezed the trigger, and reached the edge of the hatch. Pistol fire ripped up at him as he silhouetted himself against the dim glow of the deck lights. At least half a dozen bullets hit his breastplate or hauberk and ricocheted, and his eyes were pitiless, frozen sapphire come fresh from the heart of hell as he fired straight down the hatch into the crowded men at the foot of the ladder again and again.
* * *
Syndail Rahdgyrz went down as a charge of buckshot amputated his right leg at the knee. The same buckshot killed another man and wounded two others, and Sergeant Garzha flew backward with the next racketing blast. The deck was hot and steamy-slick with blood, the bodies heaped at the foot of the ladder blocked it like some crazed butcher’s barricade, and still that implacable black shape towered above the hatch, raining death down upon them.
Rahdgyrz saw it happening. He felt the blood—and life—pumping from his shattered leg, felt the darkness coming down, and in those fading moments, he saw his crew break. Saw them realize no one could dare that hatch and live. Saw them falling back.
“Open the armory, lads!” he said weakly. “Get to the muskets! Get to—”
His world dwindled into darkness.
No one heard him at all.
* * *
“That’s right, Gyffry,” Stefyny Mahkzwail said encouragingly. “Just slide down the rope, like the seijin says.”
As she’d hoped, the word “seijin”
worked its charm. Gyffry had all of any eleven-year-old boy child’s fascination with fantastic tales and bloody adventures. Seijins were a staple of his favorite stories, and the exotic dark-haired, armored woman smiling as she effortlessly boosted him over the sternwalk rail to reach the rope hanging down from the taffrail was the very embodiment of those selfsame stories.
Stefyny was grateful the seijin had been able to return to them, leaving the deck to her companion, and she was grateful for the strength of the arms lifting Gyffry, yet her heart was in her throat as her son shinnied down the knotted line. Ahrnahld had gone first, with four-year-old Zhosifyn strapped tightly to his back, sliding down to steady the rope and catch anyone who slipped on their own way to the seijins’ fishing boat. Mahgdylynah Harpahr had gone second, displaying a surprising agility for someone in her fifties, and she stood in the boat as it rose and fell on the waves, with one arm around Ahlyxzandyr, who’d been the first of the children to dare the descent, and the other around Zhosifyn.
Stefyny had no idea where this night’s madness was likely to end, and part of her screamed to turn around, to retreat from the seijins’ false promises of safety. They served Cayleb and Sharleyan of Charis. Surely they hoped only to find a way to use her family against her father! And even if they didn’t—her father had always said Cayleb was an honorable man, so perhaps they wouldn’t—what about her children’s souls? If Mother Church was right, these weren’t seijins; they were demons, claiming to be the reincarnation of those ancient champions of God and the Archangels only so that they might entice ever more souls into damnation!
Yet at this time, in this world, Mother Church spoke with Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s voice, not God’s. She believed that—she knew that—just as she knew why Clyntahn had wanted her, and her sisters, and their children in Zion. And so, even as terror pulled her in one direction, reason and courage drove her towards those ropes and that wave-surging fishing boat.